Hey Reader!

There I was — sitting in a Zoom room with 147 people — listening to yet another person confidently describe their latest transcendent breakthrough using phrases like “background spaciousness” and “interpenetrating awareness.”

Everyone else was nodding like they were agreeing the sky is blue.

And I was ready to throw something.
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​Why can’t I access these mind-blowing states everyone else seems to slip into so effortlessly?

This was supposed to be an advanced course — the kind of thing you take after you’ve already licked everything else. And I had. Decades of books, workshops, retreats… every system and structure designed to make me better, more evolved, more anything other than what I already was.

Self-help books with worn dog-eared pages.
Personality assessments promising to explain how I can be better.
Therapy, journaling, morning routines designed to transform my existence by 7am.

And the core message behind all of it?

Your current experience, your emotions, reactions, physicality, messy human responses, these are the problem.

Rise above them. Edit them. Change them. Transcend them. Reframe them. Become something purer, cleaner, more evolved.

The problem was, no matter how hard I tried, the fundamental feeling of wrongness never disappeared. In many cases, like the infuriating Zoom course, it actually got much worse. Each new practice promised to be THE thing finally fixing me, and when it didn’t, I felt more broken than ever before.

So I kept chasing the next solution.
The next method.
The next promised upgrade.

But here’s what nobody tells you:

The more you try to fix yourself, the more broken you feel.

Not because transformation doesn’t happen — but because the very act of trying keeps reinforcing the idea that you need to be fixed.
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Every effort becomes evidence that you’re not there yet. That something’s still missing. That you are still not enough.

So that day on the Zoom call — I. just. stopped.
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Stopped trying to transcend my experience.
Stopped comparing my internal experience to everyone else’s mental descriptions.
Stopped caring whether I was spiritually advanced or hopelessly behind.

And I asked a different question:

👉 What if I’m not really broken?​
👉 What if all this energy spent trying to become someone else… could be redirected into simply enjoying who I already am?

Check out the whole story — what led to that breaking point, and the science that made it all feel like a cosmic joke:

🌀 Read the full piece here →​
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(It might just reframe your whole relationship to self-improvement.)

What self-improvement project are you ready to drop?

Hit reply and tell me. I’d love to hear from you!

With love and rebellion,
​Pamela

P.S. If you enjoy these emails, you can buy me a coffee if you'd like. :)